CINCINNATI – Kroger Health recently received emergency approval for a COVID-19 home test collection kit.
The kits will first be available to front-line employees at Kroger brand stores based on medical need, according to a Kroger press release. The company hopes to expand the kits to other organizations and companies in the coming weeks.
Kroger Health Collection Test Kits will be available to Kroger brand associates in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia, according to the release.
The United States Food and Drug Administration issued the emergency authorization Tuesday.
Kroger / Photo Provided
Gravity Diagnostics, a laboratory in Covington, Kentucky, is working with Kroger Health and expects to be able to process almost 60,000 cases per week, according to the statement.
According to the press release, this is how homemade test kits work:
- Home collection is done under the supervision of a licensed healthcare professional. The process is simple and available at no cost to eligible patients who meet the established clinical criteria for possible infection or exposure to COVID-19.
- Patients will have access to a website where they will answer screening questions, enter their organization’s benefit code and an individual code, such as an employee ID, and complete a clinical evaluation. If a patient qualifies, a healthcare professional will issue a prescription and the home collection kit will be delivered to your home within 24-48 hours.
- The home collection kit includes a nasal swab, a transport vial, an instruction sheet, a prepaid shipping label, and packaging materials for shipping the sample to the laboratory.
- Upon receiving the home collection kit, a healthcare professional guides the home collection process through telehealth, a two-way video chat. Direct observation helps to ensure that the proper technique is used for sample collection.
- The patient will then send their sample overnight to the laboratory for processing, which will take an average of 24 to 48 hours.
- In the laboratory, the collection undergoes a molecular diagnostic test, a test that detects parts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and can be used to diagnose an active infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
- If the test results are negative for an active infection, the results are submitted to the patient’s electronic medical records portal. Alternatively, patients can be called if they do not consent to use the portal. For a patient whose test result is positive, a healthcare professional will contact them by phone to provide a recommended course of care.
- The test results will be accessible only to the patient and will only be shared with your organization if the patient authorizes the publication of their results. All results are reported to government health agencies as required by law.
“In recent months, Kroger Health has given Americans access to COVID-19 testing through community testing sites across the country; however, we have observed that some people do not have access to transportation or live nearby. of these community testing sites, “Colleen Lindholz, president of Kroger Health, said in the press release. “To help ease this burden and provide greater accessibility, we will offer a test-at-home solution to our associates, first followed by other companies and organizations.”
On April 21, LabCorp was the first company to receive emergency authorization from the FDA for a COVID-19 test sample collection kit at home, according to an FDA press release.
